Fig. 263.—Fac-simile of a Niello executed on Ivory, from the original design of Stradan, representing Columbus on board his Ship, during his first Voyage to the West.
More special mention must be made of Bartholomew Baldini, better known under the name of Baccio, to whom we owe, in addition to some large engravings both of a sacred and of a mythological character, twenty vignettes designed for the folio edition (1481) of Dante’s “Inferno;” of Andrea Mantegna, a renowned painter, who himself engraved many of his own compositions; and of John van der Straet, called Stradan (Fig. 263), who executed at Florence many remarkable plates.
We find in Germany an engraver who dates several of his works in the year 1466, but on none of them has he left more than his initials, E. S. This has not failed to tax the ingenuity of those who would establish his individuality in some authentic way. Some have agreed to call him Edward Schön or Stern, on account of the stars he frequently introduces into the borders of the vestments of his figures; one asserts that he was born in Bavaria, because in a specimen of his works is the figure of a woman holding a shield emblazoned with the arms of that country; another believes him to have been a Swiss, because he twice engraved the “Pilgrimage of St. Mary of Einsiedeln,” the most celebrated in the country. But those amateurs who, upon the whole, think more of the work than the workman, are content to designate him as the Master of 1466.
This engraver has left behind him three hundred examples, most of them of small dimensions, among which, independently of sundry very curious compositions, we must notice two important series, namely, an Alphabet composed of grotesque figures ([Fig. 264]), and a pack of Numeral Cards, the greater part of which are in the Imperial Library.
At almost the same epoch Holland also presents us with an anonymous engraver, who might be called the Master of 1486, from the date on one only of his engravings. The works of this artist, whose manner exhibits a powerful and original style, are very rare in any collections not belonging to the country in which he worked. The Cabinet of Engravings at Amsterdam possesses seventy-six of them, while that of Vienna has but two, that of Berlin one only, and that of Paris six, among which we may remark “Samson sleeping on the knees of Delilah,” and “St. George,” on foot, piercing with his sword the throat of the dragon which menaced the life of the Queen of Lydia.
We have still three comparatively celebrated engravers to mention before reaching the epoch at which Marc Antonio Raimondi in Italy, Albert Dürer in Germany, and Lucas van Leyden in Holland, all simultaneously flourished.
Martin Schöngauer, for some time designated by the name of Martin Schön, who died at Colmar in 1488, was a good painter as well as a skilful engraver. More than one hundred and twenty specimens of his work are known, the most important of which are—“Christ bearing his Cross,” “The Battle of the Christians” (waged against the infidels by the apostle St. James), both very rare compositions of large size; the “Passion of Jesus Christ,” the “Death of the Virgin,” and “St. Anthony tormented by Demons,” one proof of which, it is said, was coloured by Michael Angelo. We must add (and this circumstance shows again the kind of direct relation which we have already noted as existing between engraving and goldsmith’s work), that Martin Schöngauer also engraved a pastoral staff and a censer, both of very beautiful workmanship.
Fig. 264.—Fac-simile of the letter N from the “Grotesque Alphabet,” engraved by the “Master of 1466.”